vendredi 24 décembre 2010

The weather is good, but the wind direction is still wrong. It is eastward, and goes from the Station to the shelter where we do air filtration. So, I still cannot start the air filtration. In addition, the wind speed is a bit low for the wind turbines and we have to use the old electricity generator. Yesterday, I have found all the boxes that we have left in the station last year and assembled a filtration unit. I need to modify a program.

Such a good weather should be used for field trips, but the sampling in the OTCs should better be done at the end of the season, after one year of experiment. Also it's a good weather to go to the top of Utsteinen and Teltet to quantify and compare the number of biological crusts on granitic (Utsteinen) and gneiss (Teltet) nunataks that are quite close geographically and should be exposed more or less to the same climatic conditions.

The convoy from the traverse will come back this night, and so we'll start the Christmas party without Alain, Gigi and the majority of the station team. Happy Christmas!

Welcome-Welkom-Bienvenue

Dear all,This blog is about our scientific research in the frame of 3 expeditions to the Princess Elisabeth Station, the new Belgian Research Station, in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012. The expeditions are financed by the Federal Science Policy Office for the project BELDIVA. The logistic support at the Station is ensured by the International Polar Foundation. Guides from the Belgian Army have also accompanied us during the field trips, as the photograph René Robert.In addition, in 2013, one of us has been invited to participate to a expedition by INACH (Chile).Who are we? Scientists, mostly from Belgian Universities and Institutions, and our international colleagues who are proposing their complementary expertises. We work together and a characteristics of the Antarctic research is its high level of international collaboration, as requested by the Antarctic Treaty (http://www.ats.aq/index_e.htm).Because our teams are multilingual, the blog will also contain texts in different languages (presently English, Dutch, French, and maybe more in the future...). It is possible to have translations with Google. Hopefully, you will enjoy our chronicles, and do not hesitate to write comments and questions!